Seth Godin says that everyone should keep a blog and write a post a day for two years. Most blogs won’t become hugely successful, but the simple act of thinking up an article every day for two years will change the way you see the world. I’m sure it’s true, but I’m too lazy or too busy or too something to do that. Maybe someday. Maybe I’m too much of a procrastinator though.

However, I think everyone should start an interview podcast. I’ve always loved listening to interviews on NPR (especially Fresh Air), but it always seemed like something that only a journalist with a radio show could do. Then I stumbled across Andrew Warner doing interviews over at Mixergy. Great interviews, in fact, with people like Derrick Sivers (founder of CD Baby), Tim Ferris (Four Hour Work Week), and some guy who got lost in the Amazon and had to dig deep to survive and get out. Great stuff and, with Andrew’s podcasting advice and encouragement, I decided to interview people I care about. He mostly interviews entrepeneurs. I interview skiers or, more precisely, people who make it their mission to help others ski better (instructors, coaches, trainers).

I’ve only done four interviews, but it’s been great: You learn stuff, you help people establish themselves as experts, the kind of people worth interviewing, you provide useful information or at least I hope so, and you make some fun connections or reconnections (it’s a good excuse to call up an old friend or someone you admire but otherwise would never call).

Those are the obvious benefits, but there are effects that I hadn’t expected. You start to hear how you speak. I do the interview, and then go back to edit. When I edit, I um learn, you know, the uh obvious — I and all my guests love filler words. But there’s more. I realize that I have a very non-linear way of speaking that takes away from my effectiveness as a speaker and makes me harder to follow. For example, I might say something like this: "When someone is doing deadlifts. Let’s say you have someone who wants to get strong for skiing and they’re looking for a good exercise and decide to try deadlifts…." And then of course, pepper it with ums and you knows.

So what? Lots of people speak that way, right? I feel like after only four interviews, it’s changing the way I speak very subtly. When you write anything of importance, you do a rough draft and at least one edit. The more you do that, the better your rough drafts become and the better your final drafts become. We don’t typically have any similar feedback loop for conversation. In fact, in my experience, we tend to avoid that feedback loop. I always hated listening to myself on recordings and I know many people feel the same way about themselves. And my friends, mercifully, do not critique my conversation. So again, there’s no feedback loop. Editing your interviews provides the feedback loop.

I’m not sure it will change the way I speak, but I think it will for two simple reasons. First, just knowing how I speak is huge. Second, when someone speaks directly, clearly and effectively, it takes a lot less work to edit. And since I prefer to avoid work, it’s an incentive to try to get better at my rough draft instead of trying to fix it in the editing stage. Of course you can’t always fix audio in the editing. And video? Forget it.

We’ll see where it ends, but if you are thinking there’s a topic you want to write about, consider doing interviews instead. So far, it’s been an interesting experiment for me and worth the time invested.

If you have an interview show, tell me about it in the comments or through the contact form and I’ll list you here with the anchor text of your choosing to give you a boost from the search engines.

Interview podcasts I listen to regularly include

  • Mixergy — Andrew Warner interviews entrepeneurs and people of interest to entrepeneurs. Some great stuff.
  • In the Trenches — Mike Robertson interviews top strength coaches. These are the top guys in the business, the ones that train elite athletes and the podcast is packed with good info, though also a fair bit of jargon. If you don’t know what RDLs are, it can be a bit hard to follow (RDL = Romanian Deadlift).

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